Cloak Games: Rebel Fist (12 page)

I gunned the engine and shot forward, intending to punch through them and make for the open street. 

This time, though, it didn’t work. I had escaped from an anthrophage pack in Los Angeles by running over one of the creatures, and perhaps they knew what to expect when dealing with me now. Most of the anthrophages scattered to the sides of the aisle, and for an instant I thought we would break free. 

One of the anthrophages sprang forward, leaping into the air like a giant gray frog, and landed upon the hood of the car. It lunged forward, its bony form smashing through the windshield, and the creature pulled itself into the car, its clawed hands clamping around my throat. 

Another half-second and it would have torn out my throat, but once again Russell saved my life. With perfect cool he raised his AK-47, the barrel a half-inch from the anthrophage’s gaunt skull, and squeezed the trigger. The anthrophage’s head jerked to the left, black slime spattering over the ceiling, and the dead creature slumped against me. I lost control of the car and skidded into a row of parked vehicles, the vile stench of the anthrophage seeming to coat the inside of my nostrils. Despite my shock and terror, my instincts screamed for me to move. The other anthrophages would be rushing at us, and unless I got the car moving, we were finished.

Dark shapes darted in front of the car, preparing to leap through the shattered windshield. If I tried to ram them again, they would jump into the car and rip us apart. Russell started shooting, the AK-47’s barrel flashing, but there was no way he could take down all the anthrophages before they killed us.

I shifted the car into reverse and pushed the gas to the floor. 

The car shot backwards, veering up the ramp and higher into the parking structure. I twisted around, looking through the back window. It was a big ramp, but we were going pretty fast, and in short order we would slam into the concrete railing of the next level. 

The anthrophages pursued us with inhuman speed. 

I hit the brakes, and the car skidded into the railing with enough force to crush the rear bumper, the trunk flying open. The impact rocked me forward against the dead anthrophage again, my forehead bouncing off its jaw. 

“Out!” I croaked, kicking open my door. Russell obeyed, scrambling out of the car, and I reached under the dashboard and yanked the hood release. Then I slid out from beneath the dead anthrophage, reaching into my jacket for the final grenade. 

The timer was set to four seconds, which ought to be good enough. 

“What are we going to do?” said Russell, staring at the charging anthrophages. The car made a crunching noise as the idling motor tried to push it further against the concrete railing. 

“Run like hell,” I said. I lifted the hood a few inches, propped the grenade next to the battery, and pulled the pin. “Go!” 

We sprinted around the corner and up to the next level of the parking ramp. We had gotten maybe half of the way to the third level when the grenade went off, ripping off the hood of the car with an almighty tearing sound that echoed over and over. An instant after that the first of the anthrophage pack raced around the corner.

In that instant, the shrapnel from the grenade found the car’s gas tank. 

The sound from the explosion was less of a roar and more of a tremendous thump. A gale of hot air shot past me, the floor trembling beneath my shoes, and for an awful moment I was sure that I had miscalculated, that the strength of the explosion was going to collapse the entire ramp.

But the parking structure had been built far too solidly for that. A roiling current of flame sealed off the corner between the first and second levels, the burning car in its center. Not even anthrophages could dare that kind of heat. Of course, the fire would not last for long, but it had bought us a few more moments. 

“Come on,” I said. “Stairs. We’ll head back to ground level and run for the street.”

“Right,” said Russell, staring at the fire with wide eyes. He shook himself and followed me as I ran to the end of the level, the AK-47 bouncing against my back. We made it to the stairwell, and I started to reach for the door handle…

And froze. 

Over the railing, I saw the dark-suited forms of the anthrophages racing along the medical college’s lawn, heading for the stairs. I stepped back from the door. Was there any other way to get out of here? The fire had sealed off the ramp’s entrance, and the anthrophages were smart enough to cover the stairwell. 

A sinking feeling of panic settled into me. 

We were trapped…and our only option was to fight. 

“We can’t get out,” said Russell.

“No,” I said. “Come on. We’ll have to fight them.” That meant I would have to use magic in front of Russell. “Let’s head halfway up the next level.” 

“A bottleneck,” said Russell. 

“Right, something like that,” I said, running forward. “Russell, listen to me. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What is it?” said Russell. 

We reached the halfway point of the next ramp, and I turned, trying to think of the right words. 

“We’re in serious trouble,” I said. “If we don’t fight our way free of this, we’re going to die.”

Russell nodded, his face earnest. “I know.”

I took a deep breath. “So we have to use every weapon we can…and that includes spells. I know magic, Russell. I can cast spells. Lord Morvilind taught me.”

I expected surprise. I expected disgust or fury or incredulity. I almost expected him to pull out his phone and call the Inquisition right then and there. 

I did not expect him to nod. 

“I know,” said Russell.

“It’s just that…wait. Wait. What?” I said.

“I know you can use magic,” said Russell. 

“What?” I said again, too surprised to think of something clever to say. 

“Oh, yeah,” said Russel, as if we were discussing the weather. “For about five years now.” 

“How the hell did you find out?” I said, looking down the ramp. Sooner or later the anthrophages were going to storm out of the stairwell. 

“I rode my bike home from school,” said Russell. “James and Lucy weren’t home yet, so I went upstairs to say hi. When I went into your room, you were levitating three feet off the floor.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” I said, incredulous. 

Russell shrugged. “Well, I figured you wanted it kept secret. Lord Morvilind must have taught you. It seemed like the sort of thing to keep secret.”

“You didn’t tell me?” I said. “For years I’ve been telling all sorts of lies to you, and you knew the entire time? Jesus Christ, Russell!” 

He shrugged again. “I mean…I didn’t know what to do. Women aren’t supposed to learn magic, and men who learn magic are all drafted into the Wizard’s Legion. Like Lydia’s grandpa. I didn’t want you to get into trouble, so kept quiet.”

“Oh.” My exasperation faded into a sort of sick weariness. We were about to die, after all. “Thank you, Russell.”

“You’re not really a computer programmer, are you?” said Russell. “James says you do dangerous things for Lord Morvilind.” 

“Yeah.”

Russell let out a long breath. “That’s why he’s willing to cure my frostfever, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said again. 

“Oh,” said Russell. “I thought that might be it, but…I’m sorry, Nadia.” 

“What for?” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

“I’m sorry for…everything that happened to you,” said Russell. “Because of me.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “I don’t regret it, and I would do it again.” 

We stood in silence for a moment, the only noise the distant crackling of the flames on the lower level. 

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” said Russell. 

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, Russell. I did my best.”

Russell closed his eyes, swallowed, and nodded. “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”

I wondered what the hell he was talking about, then I realized he was quoting the Bible. 

“Oh, Russell,” I said. “Maybe for you, but I’ve done a lot of bad things, and…”

“There you are.”

It was a woman’s voice, one with a pronounced British accent. 

I spun, and saw the woman walking down the ramp towards us. 

She was big. Not in the least fat, but she was over six feet tall, and to judge from the muscles I saw in her forearms, she could have picked up both me and Russell without difficulty. She had dark skin, black eyes, and long black hair pulled into a tight bun. Over her black T-shirt she wore a tactical harness with grenades, a pair of holstered pistols, and several magazines of ammunition. In her left hand she carried a minigun, an actual .50 caliber minigun, as easily as if it were a suitcase. A belt of ammo hung from the gun, attaching to her backpack. 

“Who the hell are you?” I said.

The woman’s black eyes shifted to me, and she grinned. 

“Oh, you must be her,” she said. “Oh, dear. Of course you are a skinny white girl. It is the skinny white girls who always get him into trouble.” 

I started to answer, and then I noticed something unsettling. The woman had a strange, spiraling black tattoo upon the right side of her neck, a peculiar mixture of curved lines and jagged edges. That wasn’t the peculiar part, though.

The tattoo was moving, swirling around her neck and face like the fingers of a living thing. Even as I watched, her eyes filled with darkness, becoming pits into a bottomless void.

The woman was a Shadow Hunter, bonded with a Shadowmorph that gave her superhuman strength and speed and resilience. 

“Nice tattoo,” said Russell, his voice a little unsteady. 

“Thank you,” said the woman. “What a nice young man you are. Kindly clear the line of fire, please. It was quite a lot of work to find you, and I would hate for it to go to waste.”

She stepped forward, raising the minigun, and the anthrophages raced around the corner. 

I had never seen anyone use a minigun against anthrophages before, but it made an astonishing mess. 

The recoil from the gun should have sent the woman staggering, but the power of her Shadowmorph let her stand motionless. The gun produced a constant roar, the rotating barrels blazing, and she swept the weapon back and forth like a woman watering her garden. Her aim was low, and she cut off the charging anthrophages at the knees, their legs disintegrating in sprays of black slime. The anthrophages fell with screams of fury and pain, and the Shadow Hunter sent short bursts of fire at individual anthrophages, the volleys ripping apart their skulls. 

A half-dozen anthrophages broke free of the carnage, sprinting towards us in a scattered group so the Shadow Hunter’s minigun could not tear them apart. I raised my AK-47, and Russell did the same, but it proved unnecessary. 

Another Shadow Hunter, a man, leapt into sight from between two cars. He was dressed in a similar fashion as the woman with the minigun, with a tactical harness over a black T-shirt, though he wore jeans and running shoes beneath them. His face was lean and handsome in a sharp sort of way beneath a shock of brown hair. His eyes, like the woman’s, were filled with the void, but he had no tattoo visible. The reason for that rested in his right hand. His Shadowmorph had flowed into the shape of a black sword, lusterless and dark, a blade that could cut through anything.

The Shadow Hunter proved that a moment later when he attacked, cutting the head from an anthrophage in a single smooth blow. The woman kept up her controlled bursts of short fire, while the male Shadow Hunter danced and blurred through the remaining anthrophages. They converged on him, but he was faster, stronger, more skilled, and none of them could touch him. 

The fighting was over in less than a minute. 

The woman sighed and lowered her minigun, smoke rising from the barrels. The male Shadow Hunter closed his eyes, his blade dissolving to disappear beneath his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, they were an unremarkable shade of brown. 

He met my gaze and smiled a little. “Katerina Annovich. We keep running into each other like this.”

“Katerina Annovich” was the name I had given him the last time we met, when I had robbed Paul McCade’s mansion and gotten the anthrophages on my tail. We had worked together for survival, and had barely escaped with our lives. The man before me was a Shadow Hunter, a wizard, and an extremely capable fighter. 

He was also a very good kisser, and I pushed that thought right out of my head. 

“Corvus,” I said. “What took you so long?”

Chapter 7: Militia

Russell looked back and forth between us, blinking in surprise. 

“You…all know each other?” he said, but the woman laughed. 

“Corvus?” said the woman, shifting her minigun to one hand. “Corvus? You told her your name was Corvus?”

The Shadow Hunter I had known as Corvus shrugged. “I needed an alias.” 

The woman laughed again, and Corvus sighed. 

“What the hell is so funny?” I said, exhaustion, terror, and confusion warring for dominance in my mind. 

“When he first joined our family,” said the woman, “before my time, mind you, the others called him Corvus because he was so grim and dour. Corvus the raven, as it were.”

“I had my reasons for both,” said Corvus. 

Her laughter faded. “That may be, but I didn’t think you’d want to be reminded of it.” 

“Some things we should never forget,” said Corvus. 

“I suppose,” said the woman, “but…”

“For God’s sake!” I said. “What the hell is going on?” 

“Well,” said the female Shadow Hunter, “my name is Nora. My real name, by the way, not a fake one. It’s nice to meet you.” 

“Yeah, I’m charmed,” I said. My brain pointed out that displaying rudeness to a Shadow Hunter holding a minigun was probably not the best idea. Besides, she and Corvus had just saved our lives. “Thanks for…um, well, showing up in time.” I looked at the remnants of the slaughtered anthrophages. The gray body parts and the black slime that served as their blood had created a ghastly swamp at the bottom of the ramp. “We were screwed.”