Cloak Games: Thief Trap (18 page)

“The superstitions of ignorant rabble, believed by fools for millennia,” said McCade. “The Dark Ones are real, and they grant gifts of real power. Oh, well. If you will not join us, then you will make a worthy sacrifice to our lord…”

He said…something. A word, a name, a title, I’m not sure what. I heard the syllables, heard the sounds come out of his mouth, but when my mind tried to process them into a coherent word…

Pain exploded through my head, and I had to grab at the side of the metal circuit breaker box to keep my balance. I heard Corvus grunt and stagger back, and glimpsed the black lines of the Shadowmorph crawling over his face. McCade had spoken the name of whatever Dark One he worshipped, and even the mere sound of it had been like getting hit in the face. 

“Our lord’s name brings torment to those who are not among his chosen,” said McCade. “Kill him.”

The two security men circled around the altar from the left and the right, while McCade covered the center. Corvus ducked behind the altar, but that would only give him a few seconds at best. McCade and his two goons had Corvus boxed in. No matter what direction Corvus tried to attack, at least two guns would cover him. I didn’t know whether a single bullet through the heart or brain would be enough to kill a Shadow Hunter, but I was sure that it would slow him enough so they could pump him full of lead at their leisure, and that would kill him.

Then they would kill me. At least, if I was lucky, they would kill me. There were all sorts of unpleasant things they could do to me first. 

Unless…

My eyes moved to the circuit breaker boxes. One of them had a steel lever topped with a black rubber knob. Above the lever was a yellow sticker marked with WARNING in black letters, followed by several paragraphs of legalese. Morvilind’s various tutors, alas, had not taught me the intricacies of modern electrical systems. However, I was willing to bet that the big WARNING lever would cut off power to the circuit breakers. 

And if those circuit breakers connected to the lights, that would plunge the temple into darkness. 

I stepped out of concealment, my duffel bag bouncing against my back, seized the lever in both hands, and pulled. At first it did not move, but it felt it start to give a little. 

“Boss!” shouted one of the security men. “I see her! She’s…”

“Cover the Hunter, you idiot!” snarled McCade.

The security man swung his gun around to point at me, and I yanked on the lever with all the strength I could muster, planting my shoes against the wall and shoving. The lever jerked down with a clunking noise, and I landed hard on my back, right atop my duffel bag. That hurt, though I was more concerned for the tablet. 

The security man took aim, settling into a shooting stance, his legs spread, both hands coiled around the grip of his pistol. I rolled to the side, hoping to get to the meager cover of the shelves before he shot me to death. 

Then the circuit breaker boxes let out an angry buzz, and the lights went out. 

An instant later I heard the crack of a gunshot, followed by the high-pitched whine of a ricochet bouncing off the black wall. I scrabbled backwards in the darkness, ducking behind the shelf. I had never been shot, and I didn’t really want to find out what it felt like. Both the security men started shouting, and I heard several more shots go off, the sharp cracks echoing off the stone walls. 

“Stop shooting!” roared McCade. “You’ll hit each other. Or me! Or you’ll blunder into the summoning circle!” He snarled a phrase in the Elven language, and pale green light flared in the darkness. A trio of globes of sickly green light appeared over the altar, throwing dim radiance and harsh shadows everywhere. 

As I had suspected, McCade could use some magic. That was bad. 

On the other hand, he was an idiot, which was good. That light had marked out his position to Corvus. I suspected the Shadow Hunter could see far more clearly in the gloom than a normal man could. 

Yet both McCade and his goons were handling themselves well. They began to move towards the altar, covering each other. If Corvus came at them, they could line up some clear shots and gun him down. Corvus needed a distraction if he was going to get McCade. I didn’t have any weapons, or any real way of hurting them.

I did have some illusions, though. 

I lifted my hand and worked the Masking spell, hiding the telltale light with my body. I didn’t have enough time or concentration to do a detailed Mask, but in the dim light that didn’t matter. I Masked myself as a facsimile of one of the security guards – the same black suit, muscular build, and close-cropped hair.

I made sure to alter my voice as well.

Then I took a deep breath, pushed away from the wall, and sprinted into the temple proper.

“There!” I shouted in my disguised voice. “He’s there! Boss, he’s there, by the door! Get him! He’s running!” 

The trick worked. In the dim light, McCade and his men mistook me for one of the guards. They whirled to face the vault door and started shooting, the muzzle flashes brilliant in the gloom. I kept running, slipped my duffel bag off my shoulders, took one more running stride, and spun as fast as I could as the Mask dissolved around me. 

The bag hit the nearest security guard in the left temple. His head jerked back with an uncomfortable crunching sound, and he staggered towards the altar. I dropped the duffel bag, seized the barrel of his gun with my left hand, and drove the fingers of my right hand into his wrist. Normally, something like this wouldn’t have worked, and I would have gotten shot in the head for my trouble. But I had managed to hit him hard, and the impact had stunned him. I wrenched the gun from his hand, got my fingers around the grip, and started shooting.

There were three rounds in the magazine, and I used them all. The first two hit him in the chest, and the third went into his forehead. The guard went sprawling in a limp heap to the ground, his blood gleaming in a dark pool beneath his head as it reflected McCade’s ghostly light. McCade and the remaining guard whirled to face me. I threw the empty pistol in McCade’s general direction and dove next to the altar just as they started shooting. Bullets whined off the altar, and I ducked next to the massive block of black marble. The surviving guard’s gun clicked empty, and he cursed and reached into his jacket for another clip. I peered around the edge of the altar, wondering if I could do something to stun or disable the guard before he reloaded, wondering how many shots McCade had left in his weapon. He had fired five times? Six times? A gun like that usually held eight or nine rounds, so either way if he got a clear shot at me I was in trouble…

Corvus exploded out of the darkness, moving faster than I had yet seen him move. 

The guard whirled towards him, fumbling with his gun, but Corvus was faster. The Shadowmorph blade plunged into the guard’s chest and out his back without the slightest hint of resistance. The guard went limp, and the shadowy blade seemed to pulse in Corvus’s hand, swelling and flickering with a peculiar dark glow as it drank away the guard’s life. Corvus pulled the weapon free with a flick of his wrist and turned towards McCade.

McCade leveled his gun and shot Corvus twice. The Shadow Hunter stumbled as the bullets entered his chest and stomach. I didn’t seen any exit wounds, which meant the rounds had lodged somewhere in his spine or his ribs, or they had deflected off a bone and bounced around his chest cavity. Either way he was badly injured. If the bullet had hit his heart, he was going to fall over dead.

Instead he shook his head and grimaced, and through the tattered ruins of his shirt and jacket I saw the spiraling black lines writhe over the muscles of his chest and belly, saw his flesh ripple and contort. I heard one metallic clink, and then another as the bullets fell out of him and bounced off the floor, as the life force he had stolen from the dead security guard healed the wounds that should have killed him. 

McCade backed away, his eyes wide with fright. 

“Paul McCade,” said Corvus, striding forward as he raised his sword of dark force. “For possession of the Void Codex, for trafficking with the Dark Ones, for offering them sacrifices, I bear a decree commanding your execution. Have you anything to say?” 

I moved towards the guard Corvus had killed, keeping my eyes on McCade. He fumbled his jacket for another clip, but there was no way he could reload and fire before Corvus reached him. Something mad and desperate flashed over his features as I went to one knee next to the guard and claimed his emptied gun. 

McCade’s lips peeled back from his face in a snarl, his features livid with fury. It was strange to see such rage upon his solemn face. Men like him did not raise their voices in anger. Men like him gave orders in soft, polite tones, and other men went to carry out violence in their name. 

“I have this to say, Shadow Hunter, trained dog of the High Queen,” said McCade. “You should have made me a better offer.”

He whirled and ran. That was foolish. Corvus could run him down with ease. McCade would only run to…

The realization hit me.

“Corvus!” I shouted. “He’s…”

McCade ran into the summoning circle. Harsh green light blazed up from the circle, the Elven hieroglyphs shining with ghostly green fire. Corvus cursed and sprinted towards the circle, but McCade threw out his arms and shouted his lord’s name once more. Again I heard the string of syllables, the sequence of sounds that created a word, but again my mind refused to resolve it, and pain exploded through my head. Corvus stumbled as well, the black tattoo of the Shadowmorph crawling over his face. 

“Behold!” screamed McCade, his voice a strange mixture of ecstasy and agony and joy and terrified horror. “Behold the glory of my lord! Behold the might of a Dark One!”

With those words, McCade…changed.

He grew, swelling to nearly twice the size, his expensive suit ripping apart as his flesh swelled. Even as he did, his form twisted and distorted, bulging muscle rippling over his limbs. His skin glistened with slime as it changed into a combination of leathery scales and an insect-like exoskeleton. Twitching spider’s legs erupted from his sides, and a mane of barbed tentacles burst from his back and his head.

I had never seen anything like it. Just looking at him made my head hurt, just as McCade shouting the name of his Dark One lord had sent a stab of agony through my skull. His very form had become hideous and twisted, an abomination. Even the wraithwolves had something recognizable in them, something sane and understandable. The thing that McCade had become had neither. 

He had been possessed by a Dark One. 

“Die!” screamed McCade in a strange double voice. From his mouth, or at least the barbed orifice that had been his mouth, came two voices. One was the voice of Paul McCade, albeit distorted with pain and madness. The other…the other was a voice that sent little jagged pulses of agony through my head. It was as if every word the voice spoke was a name of a Dark One. “Die, worms! Die!” 

The creature surged forward, pincers and tentacles reaching for Corvus. He leaped to the side, moving with the inhuman speed granted by his Shadowmorph, but McCade kept pace with him. One of the tentacles lashed across Corvus’s chest, opening a gash and knocking him back several steps. 

I grabbed the clip the security guard had been trying to load. I ejected the empty clip, slammed the new one into the gun, and took aim. A deep breath, and I emptied the clip into McCade, aiming for his…well, the thing that had been his torso. I suppose it was his center of gravity now. I wasn’t the best shot, but McCade had gotten a lot bigger. All nine bullets tore into McCade, staggering him. He let out a hideous scream of rage and fury that sawed into my head, black slime spurting from the wounds. Yet it didn’t slow him. He resumed his pursuit, his tentacles and pincers reaching for Corvus. 

I looked around, frantic. Part of my mind pointed out that I could take the duffel bag and run, leaving Corvus to his fate. He had been willing to take the tablet, which would have condemned Russell to death. But he hadn’t known that, had he? He thought he had been doing the right thing, and as annoying as it had been, I couldn’t blame a man for that. 

A more practical part of my mind pointed out that McCade had seen my face, that he would realize that I had stolen his tablet, and that I had just pissed him off by shooting him nine times. Even if I ran, once he finished Corvus, he would hunt me down and kill me. 

If Corvus and I didn’t kill McCade now, I was going to die. 

But I had no idea how to kill him. He had shrugged off nine bullets, and I had no spells that could hurt him. I racked my brain, trying to think of an idea. I didn’t know anything about the Dark Ones, save what I had learned today, but Morvilind had taught me a little about summoning spells. Summoning creatures from the Shadowlands took tremendous amounts of magical power. If the Dark Ones came from the Void beyond the Shadowlands, then presumably it would take even more power to call up a Dark One. 

So where had McCade gotten that power? 

I cast the spell to sense the presence of magic again. I still felt the dark power radiating from the tablet in my duffel bag, and the malevolent auras around the dagger and chalice upon the altar. I also sensed the tremendous power radiating from the circle. It had been latent before, but McCade had activated it by crossing the boundary. 

It was identical to the power within the chalice, the dagger, and the tablet. I suspected McCade had used the items to open the way to the Void, to make contact with whatever Dark One he worshipped. To do so had required a spell of great power. 

And like many spells of great power, it was fragile. 

I needed the tablet. I didn’t need the chalice or the dagger. 

I seized both items from the altar and flung them into the circle. There was a snarling flash of ghostly green flame, and a howling nothingness appeared into the center of the circle, a void that swallowed the chalice and the dagger whole. A pulse of dark magic washed through the temple, and the floor shuddered and groaned. A ribbon of green fire burst from the circle and wrapped around McCade, and the hulking creature screamed. He staggered, his pincers and tentacles lashing at the air, and Corvus regained his balance, his sword of dark force coming up in guard.