Demon Accords 10: Rogues (29 page)

The three stacks of abandoned pallets burned hot enough to make it difficult to get near as they crossed the minefield. Buck could feel his skin getting burned as if he’d been in the hot sun for an hour. Abruptly, the flames disappeared and the coals burned bright for a couple of seconds before going out.  Three blackened towers of smoking charcoal stood where roaring infernos had previously burned bright.

Buck wasn’t the only one to glance at the kid when the flames went out, but the supernatural duo just kept moving forward.

Past the stacks of pallets, the huge pipes and giant funnels of the pulp processors came into view.  The kid was right.  The intricate weave of man-sized tubes and house-sized vats made things way more dangerous.

Declan suddenly paused, his hand going up in the closed-fist signal to hold position.  Someone had given this kid serious training in military techniques.

The young witch seemed uncertain, so Buck moved up closer.  The spinning orbs swept out around him, now including him inside their orbit.

“What’s up?” he whispered, a little unnerved by the death balls changing their pattern without the kid even glancing Buck’s way.

“There’s a spell ahead. I think it’s a death spell.  I left the tree boughs I need outside when we rushed in here.  Not sure how to proceed,” Declan said.

“You need to do what Tami suggested,” Stacia said, watching the spaces around them.

The kid shifted his feet nervously.

She sighed at him.  “I know you don’t like it.  I don’t like it either.  But they have to be stopped.  Nature will forgive you.”

Buck was lost and shrugged at Hollis and Cochran when they came up to confer.

“What’s up?” Hollis asked.

Buck explained what little he knew while Stacia whispered a few more words in Declan’s ear.  The kid nodded, but looked a little sick to his stomach.  He knelt down by her feet and placed both hands on the floor.  Seconds ticked by, and the team spread out around them looked on with uncertainty.  A little brown shape came scuttling between a pair of pipes.  Guns came up as the DOAA agents shifted to instant aggression. 

Stacia held up both hands, palm out, to calm the tense agents.  The animal was a good-sized rat, and it ran up to Declan and froze in place.  Immediately, a half-dozen more came scurrying in from all around.

Declan lifted his hands and touched the first rat on its head with his index finger.  “Thank you for answering my call.  Thank you for your sacrifice,” he said so quietly that only Buck and the team leaders could hear him. The kid pointed ahead, and the rat scuttled forward.

Everyone stood frozen: the agents, the witch and the werewolf and Buck.  Even the other rats were all mini-statues, not even twitching.

One foot, three feet. Nothing happened until about eight feet.  The rat stopped in mid-stride and trembled. Then it fell over.  Its eyes glazed, its feet stopped moving, and its tiny chest froze between breaths. It shrank in on itself, reminding the deputy of his wife vacuum-wrapping food for the freezer. Within two, maybe three seconds, it went from a vibrantly alive animal to a mummified corpse.

The kid swore and lifted one hand but Stacia grabbed his arm and caught his eye, shaking her head slowly.  Reluctantly, Declan lowered his fist and took a deep breath.  Then he rummaged in his bag of tricks and came out with half an egg carton.  He pulled out an egg and tossed it underhand at the rat’s body.

When it hit the floor, it shattered, releasing not wet yolk and whites, but a cloud of grayish powder.  Immediately, the powder puffed up and began to cling around something: a shape that didn’t stay still but shifted in an amorphous blob.  It reminded Buck a little of a lava lamp.  Except lava lamps don’t scream.  This thing screeched like a hundred fingernails on a blackboard.

The powder-covered blob lifted off the ground, pulsing in what could only be described as agitation, its noise one of the most painful things Buck had ever heard.  It was even worse for Stacia, who clapped her hands to her ears and dropped straight to the ground.

The young witch, face locked in an angry grimace, strode forward and shoved both arms straight into the blob.  Expanding outward like an overblown balloon, the blob stretched until gaps appeared in the powder covering its previously invisible form.  Then it just collapsed back into itself, shrinking until it disappeared with an audible pop, its cry collapsing along with it.

Declan stood there, still angry, flexing his powder-covered hands.  Stacia pulled her hands away from her ears and looked at him in surprise, followed quickly by worry.

“What did you do?” she asked, clearly upset, although Buck, for one, was really happy the screaming thing was gone.

“I took it.  And in the near future, I’m gonna shove it down that witch’s throat,” Declan said.  He turned to look over the team.  “Clear.  Moving forward.”

He started forward, committing the cardinal sin of not waiting for his partner.

“What’s the issue?” Buck whispered to Stacia, who was gathering herself and her gun.

She shook her head, frustrated.  “I don’t know.  He shouldn’t have done that.  It smells wrong. 
He
smells wrong,” she said, then moved to catch up.  Buck, not having a partner and desperately hoping to see his family at the end of this nightmare, stayed close to the two most powerful players on the field.

The rest of the team spread out, two by two, moving through the tangle of pipes, valves, and storage tanks.

It happened ten seconds later.  A sound like a steel trap snapping shut, a wet gurgle, and when Buck looked back, he saw two headless bodies, gouts of blood jetting over their armor, standing, then falling.  There might have been an impression of something brown blurring back into the tangle of pipes and conduits.

Stacia stepped up next to him and aimed her bullpup shotgun, tracking its double barrels across the jungle of metal.  Buck waved other team members down as the girl’s muzzles crossed their positions, apparently tracking something only she could hear. The gun fired abruptly, both barrels almost as one.

A round hole, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, appeared in one pipe; a dent and a streak of silver popping into being on the side of a vat next to the hole.

Something squealed in pain, the noise dropping off as audible footsteps took it rapidly away.

“Tagged one of them,” Stacia said, slipping two more shells free from her bandolier and popping them into the dual mags of her shotgun.  “They attacked together to overcome both partners at the same time.  Won’t do that again.”

Without a word, the rest of the team pulled in closer, eyes wide and faces tight with fear.  There were only six left, not counting Buck, Stacia, and Declan.

Hollis’s face was a mask of anger.  “They’re wearing us down.  We aren’t going to make it at this point.”

“Well, it could be worse.  You all would have been dead twice over by now if it wasn’t for us,” Declan said, voice calm and even.  He was the least scared, the least worried.  Stacia was standing half a pace behind him and watching him with a deep frown.

Buck couldn’t place it, but the kid seemed odd.  Up until now, he had seemed remarkably normal, if perhaps a little quiet and maybe slightly more mature than the standard nineteen-year-old college male.  But now he seemed colder, maybe more aloof.

“Do you have any plan for getting this done without killing all of us?” Hollis asked.

“There are two wounded wolves, the alpha, and the witch left,” the kid said, as if that made it easy.

“Wounded doesn’t make them less dangerous.  Probably more,” Buck said.  Cold blue eyes turned his way, making his breath catch in his chest.  The young witch was definitely different and Buck was beginning to see why Stacia was worried.  “Also, you said there was another. One you couldn’t figure out?”

A frown appeared between the blue eyes.  The kid dropped down into a kneeling crouch, left palm on the concrete.  His eyes stayed locked on Buck for a moment, then he closed them.

“Male wolf—burned, but functional.  Female wolf—wounded right forepaw, not very effective.  Alpha wolf, large male, full health, nasty,” Declan muttered.  “Female witch, hmm.  She’s brimming with power.  Oh?  Your guy?  He’s dead.  She’s animated him, which will be a drain on her.  And… yes, something else.  Small.  Can’t quite get a grasp on it.  A… a child?” he asked himself, face scrunched up in concentration.  Stacia shared a glance with Buck.  She was
really
worried about her witch.

Declan opened his eyes and looked first at Stacia, then around at each of the rest, one by one.  “The area past here opens up to—”

“Dump it!” Stacia said, interrupting him.  “Whatever the fuck you’re carrying from that spell back there, dump it now.”

“And waste energy that I might need?” he asked, frowning angrily.

“I don’t care.  Get rid of it.  It’s not you.  It makes you stink.  Even Draco doesn’t like the smell of it on you,” she said, getting right up in his face. He glanced at the German shepard-sized dragon.  It was clinging to a metal railing behind Stacia, its feet flexing and shuffling like an anxious parrot. When it saw him looking, it ducked away.

He swore.  “It’s just energy,” he said, but he didn’t sound real confident.

“And crack is just chemicals.  Get rid of it.  Your aunt would be disgusted,” Stacia said.

Young men are a stubborn species and never more so than when confronted by a young female.  Buck wasn’t at all sure how it was going to go, especially drawing a parent figure into it.  The kid stood frowning at the beautiful girl, who wasn’t backing down an inch.  Finally he swore again, pulled some chalk from his bag, and dropped to a knee.  He broke the chalk as he violently drew three runes before jamming his right hand on top of them and saying something in Gaelic.

It was like a stream of darkness flowed from the kneeling kid, down his arm, and into the ground.  The room was already murky, with a small amount of daylight from the few skylights high overhead, but the area around the kid seemed to brighten—to lighten up visibly.

Stacia, who’d been holding her breath, breathed out in relief.  Then she leaned down and sniffed the kid’s hair, which should have seemed weird but by now seemed almost normal.

“That’s a whole lot better,” she said quietly.  He didn’t look at her, but stood slowly and turned away, looking into his bag.  He could have been angry still, but Buck thought it was more embarrassment. Hard to tell. Stacia ignored it, instead turning to Hollis and Cochran, who’d been watching the mini-drama like everyone else.

“You guys packing any Silver Payload, Armor Piercing rounds?” she asked.

“I’d like to know how you know so much about our gear and procedures, Miss Reynolds?” Hollis asked.

“I have my sources, Agent Hollis.  So how about it?  Any S-PAP?” she asked again.

“Sounds like a gynecological test,” Declan muttered without looking up from his kit bag.

Stacia caught Buck’s eye and gave him a victorious wink before looking back at Hollis and raising an eyebrow.  She was visibly relieved and now exuded confidence.

“Yeah, we all carry at least one mag of S-PAP.  Why?” Hollis finally answered.

She pointed at the pipe with the hole and the vat with the dent in it.  “They’ll be darting in and out of these pipes.  Standard silver ball ammo won’t cut it.  Too soft, as you can see where my one slug failed to punch through.  S-PAP should cut through some of this cover.  Might make a big difference.  Right, Declan?  You were about to tell us what’s up ahead.”

He pulled out a little Altoids tin, one of the very small ones, before looking up and meeting her eyes.  Then he looked around at the rest of them and his expression was vintage teenage male—wary and ready for a fight.  Buck held his breath, hoping no one would say a word about whatever it was that had just gone down between him and his weregirl.  Luckily, Devany wasn’t there and the rest had better-honed survival instincts because no one said a word.