Sword and Shadow (25 page)

The place still had power, which was surprising, if convenient. Then again, if Shea had nationalized the power system, he probably didn’t bother to turn anything off unless it became a noticeable problem.

The whole situation had now become a bit ironic to her, since she’d pretty much fallen into the leadership role. She’d led small squads here and there, like her pirates, but she’d never taken on something this important. Something told her that the fate of several worlds could hang in the balance of how they handled this, and the prospect of screwing it up made her more than a little uneasy. Raven, a mere stripling compared to her, had a hell of a lot more leadership experience than she did.

She hoped he was all right, that Shea hadn’t done anything too terrible to him.

She gave a start when a hulking shape skulked into the room, tail between his legs. “Cerberus?”

The dog chuffed at her and she gave a small sigh. The dog’s presence here, and the guilt plainly written across his doggy face, told the tale in a glance. They’d taken the dog hostage and the vampire’s sense of loyalty hadn’t allowed him to abandon the beast to his fate.

The sentimental fool.

And what really riled her at this point was the fact that she couldn’t say she wouldn’t have done the same thing in his place. The dog was more than just a dog, and somehow the past several months had engendered a sense of personal loyalty in her she’d never known. She wouldn’t have been able to simply abandon another member of the team any more than Raven could.

www.samhainpublishing.com 225

Saje Williams

The damned vampire had become quite the bad influence on her, she decided. “You thirsty?” she asked the dog.

He signaled assent and, with another loud sigh, she found a bowl and filled it from the sink in the office’s adjoining washroom. “Sorry I can’t do anything about food right now, but we’ll try to get that taken care of tonight.”

Cerberus eagerly drank about half of what she gave him and curled up on the floor by the door. She’d never seen a dog sulk before, and she ardently hoped she’d never have to see it again.

The clock on the wall ticked through the day as she sat there, contemplating their next move.

Raven awoke in darkness. Deep, abiding darkness so thick he could taste it on his tongue. Even in magesight there was nothing to see.

Wherever he was, mana did not touch it. A perfect prison for someone like him.

Up to a point. It seemed that Shea was immune to his powers—he could see right through whatever cloud of obfuscation Raven managed to cast. But that wasn’t true of his minions, and, unless Shea’s doppelganger planned on personally supervising his whole incarceration, it could prove to be a problem for them.

How arrogant
was
this version of Shea, anyway? Arrogant enough to think he had total control of the situation? Word had it he was a control freak. He’d most likely want to be hands on, but the real question was—

how many irons did he have on the fire right now? Could he afford to be hands-on with everything?

Somehow Raven didn’t think so. He’d
want
to be everywhere at once, running the show, but even an immortal as capable as Deryk Shea, or his doppelganger, couldn’t manage
that
trick.

So he waited.

Patience was probably the primary vampiric virtue. Raven could wait better than just about anyone. He’d turned a virtue into a talent.

226

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

He sat on the floor with his legs folded in the lotus position, and stared forward. An observer could easily have assumed he’d died for real, since he didn’t blink and didn’t move even a muscle. As one of the undead, he wasn’t required to breath except to speak, so there wasn’t even the rise and fall of his chest to indicate that he wasn’t the cadaver he appeared to be.

What he did, however, was listen. Beyond the deep, dark silence of this room, he could hear the distant hum of machinery, and if he stretched his awareness even further, he could hear murmured voices and snatches of conversation.

Then came a sound he couldn’t quite make out or identify. A strange mix of biological and mechanical, a heartbeat and a subtle hum of articulated micro-mechanisms. The door opened, yet the darkness remained untouched. The oddly mechanical sound grew louder.

He rose silently from the floor, sliding toward one of the side walls, ears tuned toward the door. Air moved rapidly and Raven found himself in the grasp of someone—something—nearly as strong as he was Fingers like small steel rods tangled in his jacket. Still suspended in darkness, Raven snapped his arms upward, trying to break the grip. His jacket tore away and he spun free, firing a kick into his unseen opponent’s legs.

It was like kicking a girder. His nerves fired a message to his brain that would’ve been pain had he been a mortal man, but instead it was a warning that repeating that particular move would be a bad idea and pointless to boot.

This was no human being he faced, he realized. Not even an immortal could fight so effectively in pitch darkness—in a blackness so deep that even a vampire’s eyes could find nothing upon which to focus. This semi-mechanical creature was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

He let reflex and instinct take over, relying on his sense of touch and the Wing Chun sticky fingers technique he’d picked up back on Earth to defend himself. Touch, parry, divert, trap, release, repeat. The blows stung, but he was able to divert the vast majority without taking any damage at all.

www.samhainpublishing.com 227

Saje Williams

He wanted to strike out, but wasn’t sure it would do any good. So he spoke. “So who—or what—are you?”

He thought he already knew the answer, but had to ask. Cybernetic humanoids had never been created on his home Earth, but he knew the theory well enough. His world’s research took a different path, especially after Loki’s intervention.

He hadn’t really expected a spoken answer, and wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t receive one.
Think, damn you! What weakness could an
android have?

A skeletal structure of titanium, or similar alloy, a gas-driven musculature, no need to breathe, eat, sleep, or pass waste.
A closed
system, assuming…
His thoughts zeroed in a glimmer of an insight.

Assuming an internal power source of some kind. Of course! The energy requirement for something like this had to be tremendous.

It could have its power beamed in from outside itself, but that seemed unlikely. Broadcast power was notoriously inefficient.

He parried and redirected the next round of blows, mind racing furiously. The most logical place to put a power plant would be in the same protected location as the heart was located within the human body, protected by the ribcage and the sternum. Of course, in all reality, they could have put it anywhere, but he had the impression that the closer it was to human the better Shea’s doppelganger would like it.

He executed an outside block and snapped his hips into his first counterpunch of the battle, driving with every single muscle in his body to the exact center of where he thought his opponent’s breastbone must be.

“I’m not going to sit around here waiting!” Val snapped, turning and heading for the door.

Morrigan grabbed her by the sleeve and spun her around. “You don’t have a choice!”

“The hell I don’t! Let go of me.”

228

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

As her eyes narrowed, the immortal released her and stepped back.

“Use your head. We can’t afford to attract attention. I spent a couple hours this afternoon snooping around. This isn’t really a city, though it looks like one. It’s an armed camp. Damn near everyone out there is wearing a uniform. And once night falls, there’s a curfew in place.”

The muscles in Val’s jaw jumped, but she seemed to deflate a little.

“What else were you able to find out?”

“That this Deryk Shea is a fucking lunatic,” Morrigan growled. “He’s so obsessed with the Cen and the possibility of an invasion that he started a world war just to gain dominance over the planet.”

“Not a nuclear war?”

“No. Even he’s not
that
crazy. Of course, that’s debatable. Just like on our Earth, Shea was one of the world’s richest men. He deliberately destabilized the U.S. currency and sent the whole world into a depression that made the nineteen-thirties look like the nineteen nineties. Then he hired a boatload of mercs and set about starting a second civil war in the United States. A race war.”

“What?”

“It gets better. He used the whole thing to leverage his way into the White House.”

“He became President?”

“Yeah. He bullied Congress into passing a confidence resolution and calling for a recall election of the lawful President, then made damn sure anyone that opposed him found a safer line of work. Like wrestling wolverines.”

“You sure learned a lot in such a short time,” Val said, unable to keep the suspicion out of her voice.

Morrigan aimed a twisted grin at her. “Still don’t trust me, do you?”

She shrugged. “There’s a very small, very frightened underground here. I caught one of their operatives sneaking into the hospital to steal medical supplies—the only people who have access to regular healthcare are Shea’s people. For everyone else it’s catch as catch can.”

Val blinked at her, absolutely horrified by what she was hearing. “Is he still President?”

www.samhainpublishing.com 229

Saje Williams

Morrigan shook her head. “The United States no longer exists. The end result of the war was that the world ended up united under Shea’s rule. In more primitive areas, he’s damn near considered a deity. He managed to hitch his wagon to various messianic beliefs and rode them to ascendancy.”

She sighed. “No, Deryk Shea is the undisputed Lord of Earth. He has a veritable army of religious fanatics all over the world that consider him the second coming of Christ, Vishnu, or Mohammed and punish heretics instantly. He’s made Tacoma his base camp, and probably the most dangerous place on Earth for us to be right now.”

“I’m not afraid,” Val said, though, technically speaking, nothing could be farther from the truth. She was terrified by what she was hearing. She would have never have imagined what he’d done to even be possible. He’d destroyed the world to save it. Or so he probably told himself.

“I never took you for an idiot,” Morrigan snarled back at her. “You
should
be afraid. I’m fucking terrified.”

This confession shocked Val. She’d seen Morrigan as coolly confident, one of the most self-assured beings she’d ever met, and not afraid of anything. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet,” the immortal replied. “But it’s pretty obvious we can’t hang around here any longer than necessary. I think we’re just going to have to hit them hard and go for broke. We don’t have a choice.”

“Will the underground help?”

Morrigan chuckled ruefully. “Not likely. They’re lucky to exist at all.

My guess is that Shea doesn’t consider them any kind of a threat and pretty much ignores them. Some of his followers would love to get their hands on them, but Shea himself couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”

“That’s good for them.”

“Yeah. Unless something changes. Which, I’m afraid, is pretty likely to happen if we’re successful. Shea’s not going to believe they didn’t help us.”

“Are we going to warn them?”

Morrigan considered it, then nodded. “But not until after we get Raven out.”

230

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

Chapter Twenty-nine

Upon awakening, Val wasn’t surprised to discover that Morrigan had called a war council. She emerged into the warehouse to find the cats, mustalids, and lupines already assembled, most crouched near the floor inspecting their weapons.

She climbed up on a large concrete slab next to Morrigan, who gave her a nod of greeting and continued her scan of the crowd. “They seem ready enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“Maybe too ready,” Val answered back. “Do you think they have any idea what they’re up against?”

“Considering
we’re
not sure what we’re up against,” Morrigan replied smartly, “I’m not sure there’s any way for
them
to know.” She stuck her fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle. “Okay, listen up. I’ve got assignments. Bridget—you and your squad have bodyguard detail. Make sure Val’s covered at all times. Tuck—your cat-folk need to stay back as ready reserve. Anything goes wrong, I want you folks to come in, guns blazing, and rescue our stupid asses.

“Claw—you and your kin are coming with me. We’re going to try a full frontal assault to start. Once we’re inside, we’re going to scatter. You’re going to use your talent for getting through small spaces to spread yourselves through the duct system.”

The mustalids exchanged glances, looking to Val, who wasn’t really up on her weasel and wolverine facial expressions—such as they were—

as if they were both pleased and impressed that Morrigan had come up with a use for their specialized talents.

“Any questions?”

The assembled hybrids shook their heads.

www.samhainpublishing.com 231

Saje Williams

The immortal assassin grinned big. “This is the big leagues, folks.

Deryk Shea ain’t prey. Not mine, not yours. But we ain’t no one’s meat either, and that’s no joke. There’s a bunch of human soldiers and wannabes guarding the place. They’ve never seen anything like us. They have one of ours in the basement and we’re going in to get him out.

“This is war. But we’re different than they are. We don’t make war on the helpless. But those who can fight back—they better watch the fuck out.”

Bridget threw back her head and howled, the sound sending chills down Val’s spine as it echoed through the warehouse. The other wolves joined in, a symphony of something beyond human speech, beyond words. Something that reached into Val’s very soul and cast her back a million years to an ancestor squatting in a cave, staring past the fire at the eyes shining out of the darkness.

“Let’s go!” Morrigan screamed, a sound nearly as primal as the cry of the wolves.

They exploded from the warehouse, a teeming mass of fur and fury, led by an immortal woman as lithe and deadly as any cat, a pale streak of fledgling vampire, and a human woman flanked by six wolf-human hybrids. They moved through the thin mist falling from a gray-clad sky, amidst the oddly welcoming scent of wet asphalt.

They encountered a troop of Shea’s soldiers around the next corner.

They didn’t have a chance, shredded in a hail of bullets before they could even raise their weapons. Morrigan strode past their shattered bodies without a downward glance and the weasels, badgers, and their ilk flowed around her like a river of fang and claw and rage.

Bryon, to Val’s surprise, launched himself up an adjacent building, running along windowsills and frames as if they were a pathway to the rooftop, so smoothly it was as if he’d simply jogged up a flight of stairs.

The flowing motion was so natural, she wasn’t even sure she’d seen it until she caught sight of him on the roof, waving down at them. Being a vampire certainly agreed with the young man, she realized. He’d 232

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

embraced his new existence whole-heartedly and seemed almost desperate to make the most of it.

The Shea Building was less than two miles from where they started out and within twenty minutes they were approaching the barricades separating the immortal’s base from the city surrounding it. What had once been an office building now looked entirely too much like a fortress.

“Are you up to this?” Morrigan asked Val, who’d been so caught up in the fervor that she hadn’t even noticed the immortal’s approach.

She nodded. They’d talked about it earlier, and she believed she had it within her to do what Morrigan had asked. “I can do this.”

“Good. There are troops behind those barricades, just waiting for us to get close enough. Waiting to see the ‘whites of our eyes,’ so to speak.

Do what you can.”

“Too bad for them,” Val said tersely, and raised her arm, pointing at one of the concrete barriers between them and where she assumed the front door would be. Energy flowed through her, power drawn not only from herself, but also the mass of warriors holding her in its midst. Rage, strength, will, and a kind of mental frenzy.
Telekinesis is all about
emotion,
she heard her instructor’s distant voice say deep in her mind.

And she continued to pour her emotions and every ounce of will into the assault. She brought an image of Raven’s face into her mind’s eye and felt a scream of anger rise within her breast.

The screech of tearing metal filled the air and one end of the huge concrete barricade rose into the air, pulling free of its rebar anchors and whirled like a dancer performing a pirouette before hurling itself into the side of the building with all the grace of an orca returning to the sea.

She raked her hands apart, clawing at the empty air, and glass shot from the shattered windows, a storm of splinters rising in a great glittering cloud as she willed it to coalesce. She conjured thoughts of the darkness, of the months spent inside her head, of longing to see Raven again, and she stoked the rage it produced as if pouring gasoline on a bonfire.

www.samhainpublishing.com 233

Saje Williams

Men screamed, their cries caught and shredded by the cyclone of whirling shards. She made circling motions with her right hand and the storm grew into a shrieking thing of unbridled ferocity. Then, suddenly, she thrust outward with her left hand and the storm threw itself against the face of the building.

The rest of the front façade along first three floors disintegrated.

Val sagged, only to be caught mid-fall by the wolves. “Impressive,”

Bridget murmured in her ear. The only sound that broke the silence was the steady clinking of glass pouring from the shattered structure to the ground below.

She steeled herself and rose from the hybrid’s grasp, turning a weary smile upon her. “Let’s go find Raven.”

Light flooded the room and Raven stared down at the humanoid figure laying at his feet, twitching and buzzing like a nest of hornets disturbed by the foot of a passer-by. He reached for mana that wasn’t there and swore aloud.

The door hissed open and Deryk Shea’s doppelganger stepped into the room, sparing the figure on the floor a casual glance before turning his dark eyes on the vampire. “You’re far more dangerous than I realized,” he said, smiling grimly. “No matter. You are no threat to me.”

“Don’t make any bets on that,” Raven spat. “I don’t give a damn how tough you think you are.”

Shea’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t get cocky, bloodsucker. If I wanted, you’d be a corpse for real. Your friends may be knocking, but they’ll never make it past my guards.”

My friends?
He started to reply but a great roar overtook them both, drowning out his words. The whole building shuddered around them.

Shea’s gazed jerked toward the ceiling and he flushed white with shock. “What the hell?”

The momentary distraction was all Raven needed. He was on the immortal before the man could blink, catching him with a rapid tattoo of 234

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

flesh against flesh, the speed of his blows matched only by the power he put into each and every one of them.

The doppelganger rebounded off the doorframe and into a perfectly executed side kick that swept him off his feet as if he’d run into a steel bar. As he scrambled to rise, Raven dashed past him, slamming the door closed and turned to the two guards who stood in the hall, mouths hanging open in shock as their fingers scrabbled for the pistols strapped to their hips.

Raven snatched the closest up by the face, his fingers digging into the flesh like talons as he swung the man around to smash the other into the nearest wall.

The door behind him shuddered from a massive blow and he knew Shea had already recovered. Whatever else he could say about the man, the bastard was certainly tough. Raven didn’t stand there waiting to see how many blows it would take to break through the door. He scanned both directions of the hallway and, picking one at random, fled the scene.

He didn’t get far before encountering his first opposition. A squad of armed soldiers were rushing down an adjacent corridor and came upon him suddenly. The only thing that saved him from a spray of bullets was the fact that they reached the ‘T’ at the same time. He was in their midst before any of them realized their intersecting trajectories.

Vampires were faster than humans. It had something to do with the nature of the cells that made up their bodies—complex, cooperative cells that can
all
act as neuro-transmitters. He was reacting to their presence before they could do much more than gasp in shock.

With the speed of a striking cobra, he snatched the automatic rifle from the hands of one of the soldiers, using not as it was intended, but spinning it his hand like a baton as he struck to the center of their mass.

The rattling roar of machine gun fire filled the enclosed space and he spun low as fragmented drywall rained down on them, sweeping out with a leg and mowing them down en masse.

He surged to a standing position and dispatched them all in turn with a series of well-placed kicks. He went to magesight and, discovering www.samhainpublishing.com 235

Saje Williams

that this area was suffused with mana, snatched up a thread and transported himself to the street above.

He turned to survey the building and his jaw dropped. It looked as though someone had fired a shoulder-launched missile at the structure.

The whole face had fallen and the parking lot in front was buried in glass so deep it looked like snow drifts.

What the hell happened here?

He caught the scent of the cats before they appeared, boiling out the shadows as if given flesh from the darkness itself. Tuck approached swiftly, cradling an M-16 in his hands and looking rather pleased to see him. “Raven!”

“Tuck. What’s going on?”

“We followed you here. Morrigan, Valerie, and the weasels and wolves are inside looking for you right now.”

“Damn. Our timing sucks lately, doesn’t it?”

The tiger chuckled. “It seems that way. We keep rushing hither and yon to rescue you folks and find that you manage to rescue yourselves without our assistance.”

Raven shot him a puzzled look. “You didn’t rescue Val?”

“She was free when we got there. Ah, here comes Bryon.”

The younger vamp trotted up from out of an adjacent alley and stopped a few feet away. “It’s good to see you, Raven.” He looked good.

Strong, confident, and poised. Being a vampire seemed to agree with him.

“Likewise. What did they do—use a pocket nuke on that thing?”

Bryon shook his head. “Val did it. She’s scary powerful now, Raven.

You should’ve seen it.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m glad I didn’t,” Raven muttered. He took a second look at the destruction and sighed. “How many soldiers do you think she killed?”

Bryon blinked at him. “Enough.”

That went without saying. Raven simply nodded in response and ghosted toward the broken barricade, crunching across the strewn glass and walking through the shattered windows into the building lobby.

236

www.samhainpublishing.com

Sword and Shadow

The interior lights flickered as a backup generator went on-line.

Raven could smell the residual traces of gunpowder lingering in the air.

At least a hundred rounds had been fired off in here. Trailers of smoke drifted lazily through the air.

He sifted through the scents, picking out Val’s remembered fragrance from the heady mix filling the lobby. He followed the invisible trail down a side corridor toward a bank of elevators and a door marked ‘stairs.’

He leaped back as the door slammed open, spilling out two struggling figures. The long blonde hair of the tallest combatant made him gasp, but it was the identity of the shorter that sent his heart leaping into his throat.

Deryk Shea caught Val by the throat. He squeezed just hard enough to end her struggles and shot a glance at Raven. “Well, well. It looks like your hand is played out, vampire. Guess you don’t have any choice but to go along with what I’ve got planned. You wouldn’t want me to rip this young lady’s throat out right in front of you, would you?”

Raven’s lip curled at the tone of casual arrogance that infested the immortal’s tone. “You weren’t so sure of yourself when I punched you out and left you in your own cell, Shea.”

“Temporary setback,” the doppelganger replied. “Oh. It looks like she’s having problems breathing. Maybe I should relax my grip a little.”

Raven caught sight of Val’s panicked gaze and took a step forward, halting only when Shea lifted her completely off the ground. All he could see was the whites of her eyes, and her face looked like a lobster’s carapace. She was slowly strangling and there was nothing he could do about it. All Shea had to do was snap his wrist and she’d be damn near irrevocably dead. With the immortal there, Raven knew he had no chance to reach her in time to infect her before too much time had passed.

His gaze flicked to the stairs behind them and spotted the wolf, Bridget, raising her rifle and taking aim at the immortal’s skull. He shook his head just slightly, meeting the wolf’s golden eyes. “What do you want, Shea?”

“I want you to kill someone. Someone who’s not even alive. That shouldn’t be hard for a cold-blooded bastard like you.”