Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (50 page)

Of course. I’m trying to crush stone; I need to shatter it!

Blackness billowed up from the floor around the portal, flooding the inside of the circle with a column of standing smoke. From within, a creature emerged. Nine feet tall, an elongated body of overlapping chitinous plates balanced on six long spindly legs. Six red eyes in the front end glowed, dying embers in a pit of ash. Four arms, two man-sized and two vestigial, reached for her. Kirsten shrieked, gliding backwards. A dark tendril lanced from its mouth, wrapping her astral form about the throat with the sickening feeling of a tongue so hot it burned.

It pulled her close, grabbing her by the forearms while its tiny limbs ripped and clawed at her chest; filling her lungs with fire. She stared at the silver thread tracing through the air back to her body from between her eyes.
It knows.
The creature forced her arms apart, holding her so she could not reach the safety of her flesh.

Kirsten screamed from the pain in her chest and the searing tendril around her neck. She kicked at it; the attack as useful as it would have been to kick a car trying to run her over. The tongue squeezed her throat; she flailed, terrified at the sound of her body gurgling in its sleep.

Out of nowhere, the demon lurched forward. Dorian appeared, crashing into its back and sliding up and over its hump. He reached past its eyes to grab its tongue with both hands, letting his weight slip backwards and impale the appendage on the creature’s own transparent teeth.

Roaring with anguish, it hurled Kirsten through the floor. She tumbled in a disorienting blur as a number of furnished apartment spaces blurred past. When she stopped, she righted herself in the middle of a cluttered living room piled high with months of unwashed laundry. Six cats fluffed up and ran, knocking things over in their haste to get away from her.

Kirsten glanced at the ceiling, gasped for breath, and grabbed the cord. The astral form lurched upwards, colliding into her skin from below with enough force to knock her standing. Stumbling from the rapid shift from astral to mortal, she careened into a crumbling wall and held on. Dorian whirled about, riding the demon Charazu, a rodeo clown come to save the contestant. He smashed it in the side with his stunrod, the loud click of the simulated weapon on its shell echoed through the cavernous space.

Claws extended, backward barbs along its forearm grew, and it twisted with a sharp jerk. The motion launched Dorian into the waiting hand. With a grip on both legs, it swung him overhead like a hammer, pounding him into the concrete floor. Then it picked him up and did it again. Back and forth, it slapped him between the same two spots of ground six times. Ectoplasmic smears slid through the dust with each strike; Dorian rag-dolled in its grip.

Horror at what she witnessed paralyzed Kirsten for the better part of several seconds. This monstrosity towered over her; the top of it all but scraped the ceiling. Its shell glistened as if wet, traces of crimson tinted the material away from pure black where it was thinner.

It exuded malice.

Charazu leaned to the right, its three left legs lifting off the ground to add power to a swing intended to bash Dorian into the gate she could no longer see. Kirsten snapped out of her stupor, calling the lash as she ran in.

The white stream wrapped about its legs, pulling the demon off its footing. Dorian flew out of its hand as a wild swing of its arm launched him. Six hundred pounds of shell and hatred smashed to the ground. The creature loosed a gurgling roar that sounded as if it came from eight mouths at once. The mild red light in its eyes flared orange as she spun through the motion of her first swing and brought the lash straight down on top of its prone body.

Dust exploded from the ground as the astral whip wrapped over the creature, crushing into it with the force of a massive object. Legs flailed, scrabbling for purchase as it loosed a roar so loud it shattered windows a story above them. Kirsten sagged forward, panting, trying to catch a second wind from the effort she poured into her psionic attack. Luminous orange liquid leaked from a crack in its shell, flowing watery lava that broke into a shower of sparks that hissed and skittered over the cold concrete.

“Kirsten, help! It hurts!” Shani’s tiny voice pierced the darkness from the left, breaking into sobs.

She whirled toward the sound. “I’m here. Where are you?”

No answer came.

With rage in her eyes, Kirsten raised the lash once more and faced at the ground where the demon had been. It was gone. Twenty yards away, a cloud of inky smoke receded along the floor, the center of which bore a faint resemblance to its face.

Dorian melted through the ceiling, falling flat on his back next to her. “Well, that was certainly unique.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine.” He folded his hands over his chest, not bothering to get up. “I’m not sure what it was trying to do smashing a ghost into the floor, plus I had a wonderful nap.” He shifted his gaze to her. “Aren’t you going to chase it?”

“No. I know how to destroy it.” Kirsten pointed at the gate. “It’ll come back when I attack the gate. I gotta find Shani first.”

“What?” Dorian sat up. “Shani is here?”

Kirsten shivered. “I… think so. Seneschal, it has to be. Demons know what hurts you, and he couldn’t get to Evan.”

Dorian floated to his feet and put a hand on her shoulder, staring at her. “Don’t let your emotions run away. Stay professional. You go right, I’ll go left. Yell if you find her.”

Shani’s face floated over an aimed gun in her mind, her expression a mixture of amusement and horror. A simple suggestion would have defused the situation, but Kirsten had let her vulnerability cloud her mind. Demons would certainly exploit her weaknesses. The first time she found Evan, in astral form, she wondered if he was a child ghost or a demon trying to trick her.
I knew I’d fall for that someday.
She took a breath of confidence, trying to convince herself she could distance her heart from her mind until the danger abated.

Kirsten readied her E-90. “Sounds good. Go.”

phemeral pleas wafted through the air in the voice of a child, always seeming just around the next corner. Kirsten edged past a pile of junk, aiming at empty ground.

“She can’t be here. There’s not enough places left to hide.”

Dorian, on the other side of the building, yelled. “It’s an entire level of an apartment building; we haven’t been everywhere. Check floor vents.”

Motion. Kirsten whirled on it, aiming at the height of an adult chest. Seneschal winked, and fired.

Her cheek slapped into grit-covered concrete, the result of a hasty dive for cover. Splinters of wood stuck to her face as she crawled behind a thick conduit decorated with bundles of wire running between floors. Icarus emerged out of the ground, aiming a massive handgun at her, but hesitated.

Gazes locked for a split second before Seneschal’s bullets kicked up dust around her boots and sent her shrieking into a ball.

“What the hell are you waiting for?”

Icarus glanced at Seneschal. “This woman is not our objective.”

“Did you forget her brat destroyed Mariko?”

Anger rippled over Icarus, white teeth stark against his face as he snarled. “Mariko… changed.” He twisted his head about as if cracking tension out of his neck. “And the boy is not her blood. We should be focusing on Medhi.”

“You’ve gone soft, Michael.” Seneschal’s boots echoed as he circled. “Did you forget she wants to send us
all
back?”

“Do we not deserve to go?”

Dorian whipped around the bank of elevator shafts, shooting at Seneschal. Icarus ducked out of sight, returning fire. Seneschal went into a forward roll, bounded back to his feet, and slid behind the neat stack of junk.

Kirsten sighted over the E-90, left to right, right to left.
Which side are you gonna come out, you fucker?
“It’s not too late for any of you.”

“Oh, but it is.” Seneschal went left.

She guessed correctly. As soon as he appeared, she put a blast of azure light through the pile. Judging by the angry roar, it had gone right through the debris and nailed him. She kept shooting into the junk, attempting to guess the route of his evasion. He did not yell again.

Behind her, Dorian and Icarus traded shots.

“Dorian, focus on the other asshole. Icarus, I don’t think you are a lost cause like the others. There’s good in you still.”

“Nauseating.” Seneschal came out of the floor at Kirsten’s feet, grabbing her by the right ankle.

She swung her arm to aim, the shot fouled as he twisted her boot with such force it rolled her onto her stomach. Dorian stopped “shooting” at Icarus, trading wary stares with him instead. Kirsten scrabbled at the ground, flinging dust and fragments of building material to the rear as she tried to crawl forward.

Seneschal pulled her in by the leg and fell on her back. She pounded him in the crotch, an attack he ignored, as he caught her by the hair and pulled her head to the rear.

“Don’t have those anymore, blondie.”

The sound of a knife sliding from a belt sheath pissed her off. A blast of psionic energy lit into him and launched him into a graceful arc to the ground well out of reach. Seneschal slid on his back, coming to a halt belt deep in a column.

“I am so fricking
done
with having knives at my throat,” she roared, and stood.

Her indignant fury turned on a dime to panic when he sat up, rifle in hand. She dove over a broken wall, landing on her hands before rolling into a somersault behind a column. Bits of concrete rained over her as she huddled down amid the chatter of automatic weapon fire.

The shooting continued, but the debris stopped falling on her.

“Look who showed up to the party,” Seneschal snarled. “You got your wish, Ic.”

Kirsten risked a peek. The former mercenary sent an unending stream of bullets across the area, following Vikram sprinting between cover. Dorian fired at Seneschal as Icarus angled for an opening on his mission target. Seneschal dissipated into a cloud of grey fog that reappeared at the next nearest fragmentary wall, firing at Dorian from an unexpected angle.

Dorian howled, grabbed his shoulder, and fell out of sight. Kirsten reached for an empty holster, and then spotted her E-90 lying on the ground out in the open, near her handprints.

Icarus fired somewhere in the dark, the report of his enormous pistol knocked dust off the ceiling. An uneasy wail came from Vikram as he vanished behind a mangled interior wall. Kirsten jumped up, running at Seneschal with the astral lash trailing behind her outstretched arm. He saw her coming, but lacked the time to reorient his weapon. He ducked, backpedaling as she swiped at him. The seething tendril passed inches over his head.

His rifle vanished in a puff of greasy black smoke as his body billowed with silvery flame. Manifested in solid form, he caught her arm on the next downstroke and spun her around by it―smacking her chest-first into a concrete post.

“Delicate little arm you’ve got, girlie.” He twisted it higher. “Mariko broke it like a twig. What shall I do to it?”

Her cheek squished into the cold, hard pylon as she struggled to get air back in her lungs.