Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 03 (37 page)
Read Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 03 Online
Authors: Evil Triumphant
56-grain 5.56mm bullets were traveling well in excess of 3200 feet
per second when they actually struck the other Draoling. At that speed, the bullets fragmented the second they hit anything solid. The one that nailed the Draoling in the wrist severed the hand from the body,
while the one that hit it in the ribs exploded into countless metal shards that shredded everything in the chest cavity. The last bullet hit the Draoling in the jaw, turning a leering grin into a gape of horror before the head snapped back and the body somersaulted away into the shadows.
Jytte shifted her gun to cover the behemoth, and a curious sensation rising in me forced me to shout at
her. "No, don't." Somehow, I knew the creature, and 1 knew that to shoot it was not going to be effective.
I don't know if she heard me or just chose to ignore me, but she tightened her finger on the M-177's
trigger. The bullets hit solidly in a ragged line running from the monster's right hip on up to its left
shoulder. They staggered the creature and dumped it back on its buttocks, but none of them pierced its
hide.
Howling in furious pain, the creature rolled forward and, digging its black talons into the ice, scrambled straight at Jytte. Without giving the creature a second glance, Jytte hit the clip release and slammed a
fresh magazine home in the carbine as the first dropped toward the floor. Working the charging lever, she started to bring the gun up again.
Acting without consciously knowing why, I vaulted the stalagmite wall. 1 knew there was no way 1 could
land on the ice and remain upright, so 1 never even tried, landing on my left thigh and buttock, I slid
toward Jytte and kicked out with my right leg. I hit her in the left hip, knocking her out of the monster's path, then I twisted myself up onto my left knee and drew the Wildey Wolf in my right hand.
The creature charged on, picking up speed. Icicles teased from the ceiling by its back cascaded in pieces down around its shoulders. Ice fragments gouged from the floor filled the air like snow kicked up by a horse galloping through a winter's field. Its bellowslike lungs pumped air in and out, the huffing and puffing of an organic steam locomotive bearing down on me.
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Part o
f me knew, as the musty, sour breath hit me fro
m 10 meters away, I should be terrified. The greater part
of me, th
ough, knew that to succumb to terror would be to die. Even as the creature raised its right paw
, the
black, scythe-blade talons trembling with expectation, I
knew
1 had it. I raised the Wildey Wolf and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet entered the creature's face through the right nostril and immediately sent a blue-black geyser of blood back out in its wake. The creature's gait faltered almost instantly, and the raised paw caught a stalactite, breaking the stony protrusion off. That slewed the body around toward where I had been hiding. 1 flattened against the floor and felt its left foot brush by barely above me, then heard more snapping and crackling as the monster crashed to the ground and lay still.
Rolling on to my back, I saw Crowley helping Jytte to her feet. She shook her head and blinked her eyes a couple of times, but looked no worse for the wear. Crowley looked at me and smiled. "That was damned cocky, you know."
I frowned and reholstered the Wolf. "Nonsense. The nostril slit was about the size of a large pizza slice. A blind man could have hit it easily."
"I know. That wasn't the cocky part." Crowley's green eyes sparkled. "Shooting only once
was."
Jytte stood and looked quizzically at her carbine. "Why did your shot kill it and mine had no effect?" She hesitated for a second, then added, "More precisely, how did you know my bullets would have no effect?"
I got to my feet without help and folded my arms. "I'd
seen Draolings before, and Crowley here had impressed upon me how they had been the genesis of some
pretty fearsome folklore. Lots of things we've seen in other dimensions are like that."
Crowley gave Jytte a wink. "Many of Earth's heroic legends are based in encounters with creatures from other dimensions."
I shrugged. "Somewhere in the back of my mind, 1 guess I remembered a description of a huge, hulking creature that ate men. 1 think the cold had something to do with it and, perhaps, your name."
She frowned. "Jytte is a Danish variation of Judith... Oh, I see. Grendel."
I nodded. "Grendel's thick hide could not be pierced by ordinary weapons. I assumed the nasal membranes were not so tough."
"Why not the eye?"
"Eyelid."
Jytte accepted my answer with a grim nod. "Thank you for saving my life."
1 pointed at the two dead Draolings. "Thank you for doing what needed to be done."
"Speaking of which, what are we going to do here?" Crowley frowned as he surveyed the cavern. "Clearly, Pygmalion is not watching over this place that closely. If I can find the command center for the dimensional gate the Draolings and this Grendel used to get here, 1 can set it up to be useless for them."
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Jytte l
ooked at both of us. "I know the chances are slender, but will you allow me the time to look for oth
er
survivor
s?"
"By all means. Crowley, why don't you fix the dimensional gate, and I'll help Jytte search this place." I kicked the Grendel's body. "Do you know the dimension that gives birth to these things?"
Crowley nodded. "I tend to avoid it, but, yes." "Good. When we're done here, I want to drag this body off and dump it in its home."
Jytte frowned. "Won't that just anger these creatures?" "Could be," I smiled, "but it should also serve to remind
them that Earth is where Beowulf lived. 1 want to remind
them that forgetting that particular lesson is something
that can be downright fatal."
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Our search for survivors in Pygmalion's cavern proved fruitless, and a grim air settled around Jytte.
Wordlessly, she listened to Crowley's simple instructions concerning dimensional walking, then helped the two of us lug the Grendel backto its home dimension. There in Grendelheim, Crowley used telekinesis to lift the dead creature into the branches of a gnarled tree, leaving it like some grotesque parody of the Reta.
Crowley had left the dimensional gate at the Pulliam estate in a random select mode. "For this type of gate to work, there must be a link between it and the gate at the other end. Gates in RSM do not maintain a
connection, and only the sending of a proper unlocking code from another gate can bring it out of that mode and under control."
"So nothing more will be heading through that gate?"
"Right. Oddly enough, that gate was not part of the estate until recently—probably after Pygmalion had abandoned it." Crowley interlaced his fingers and bridged them out in reverse, cracking the knuckles.
"Draolings are not good for much, but they do have a knack for setting up makeshift gates. Theirs are of limited capabilities in terms of size and the distance over which they permit travel, but they function for Draoling purposes."
We appeared back in my office in the Lorica Citadel in Phoenix. "You mean they were not using a gate that Pygmalion had placed there?"
The occultist unbuckled his weapon's harness and set it on the table back in the conversation nook. "I saw no
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signs of other gat
es there. It may be that he doesn't know how to create gates."
Jytte shook her head. "Is that possible? Pygmalion
is
a Dark Lord."
"True, but he was a human being until only a few years ago. He might never have been taught how to create them." Crowley pointed toward the window and the red warning lights blinking from the maglev train circuit around the city. "Nero Loring built a dimensional gate without knowing what it was, but only because he was given the plans by an agent under Fiddleback's control. The knowledge of how to build gates is quite limited, both in depth and distribution. The vast majority of gates are little rabbit holes—shunts from one dimension to the next. Fully operational, variable-selection gates are very rare."
I shot him a suspicious glance. "But most of the ones I have seen are of that rare variety. You even own one."
Crowley smiled broadly. "Your experience is atypical because you've been running with me, and I know where most of the good gates are. And, as for the one 1 possess— a small one with little more than a single-person capacity—I got it as many other Dark Lords got theirs: 1 stole it."
The occultist opened his hands. "While you've seen a lot of functional gates, there are hundreds more that are dead. They have no control functions, so they can never created a link out to anything. Someone with a
working gate can interrogate them and set up a link, which is what Pygmalion doubtless had intended the gate Nero Loring built here in Phoenix to do with a dead gate he has somewhere."
"He came damned close to succeeding."
"Agreed. The trick here is this: Fiddleback has not found an active gate large enough to move him, nor has he been able to transplant the controls and power supply from another gate to his dead one. He's stuck out there unless and until we bring him in."
Jytte frowned. "We have dismantled the controls for the maglev gate here. Does that mean it is a dead gate and could, technically speaking, still function?"
Crowley nodded. "Sure, provided someone has a power source sufficient to open it and move something that large. As we know, those power requirements are not easy to meet."
"That's good, else we'd have Dark Lords stacked up for landing approaches like planes atO'Hare in the morning." I walked around to the far side of my desk and glanced at the clock. "It's midnight now." Punching an icon on the surface of the desk, a roster came up, and I scanned it quickly, "ft appears everyone is here from Japan. Bat is operational, Hal is home with his children. Dorothy is also with Hal, but Mickey and Natch are here in the citadel, as well as Vetha, Sin and Rajani."
"Coyote, we need to determine where Build-more is doing its work for Pygmalion." Jytte headed toward the door of the office. "1 will get right on that."
"No, Jytte, we can get Sinclair to get us that information. He has to still have contacts in Build-more."
She stopped and pulled off her watch cap, releasing a flood of golden hair that half-hid her face. "Chances are excellent that Sin's sources are either ignorant or will report his inquiries to Darius. This is not because Darius assumes we know something about his secret project— and I wonder if he knows what it is himself—but