Angel of Doom (20 page)

With a few quick strides, she was out from the edge of the tall grasses and up beside the hand-built entrance to
the mountain of Charun and Vanth. She peered around the edge and saw that the Spartans had gone down a hundred feet of corridor, thanks to their long strides, and were approaching a gate. She switched on the shadow suit hood's optics and gave a verbal order to search for cameras or electric eyes, things that even her finely tuned instincts couldn't discern in the shadows of the unlit hallway.

Domi didn't merely skim or glance; rather, she looked along as much of the wall detail as the telescopic zoom and light amplification would allow her to, which meant everything that wasn't obscured by the massive shoulders of the New Olympian war suits. There was no way she was going to endanger the other members of her team without a thorough examination of the artificial corridor. Fortunately, it seemed the only man-made objects were the ribs that upheld the rock walls, and the flat plates of steel that formed the roof and walls at the exposed entrance. No electrical wires were in evidence, and the metal looked as if it had been present for centuries, thanks to rust.

No wiring, no bulbs were in evidence, and there were no small mammals in the crags and holes along the walls of the deeper tunnel. She observed as the gate rose and heard the clank of chains and a pulley system lifting the iron bars. Domi remained still, so that if someone looked at her, she'd simply appear to be just another rock. Even her breathing was shallow, so that her shoulders and ribs didn't shift too much.

It was waiting, and those who knew Domi would have never thought she'd have this kind of patience, but this was not simply idling. She was observing, and staying low profile. She blended into her surroundings, eyes and ears peeled. She was not only watching for any holes in the Etruscan gods' security, but also if someone was coming up on her from behind.

So far, she was safe in her periphery, and hadn't missed
that the gate was large, heavy and dwarfed the pair of Spartans. There were also gaps between the bars, which the hood's optics immediately measured, displaying the dimensions of each gap. Getting through would be a task of phenomenal contortion even for the slim, tiny Domi, let alone any of the rest of her teammates and Smaragda. The only means of getting through would be to rely on technology that was left behind at Cerberus, or crudely spending time digging a channel beneath the gate, and hoping the surrounding dirt didn't cave in on the ditch.

The second option would also leave them vulnerable during the length of time it took to dig that hole, especially if it was to be large enough for Edwards to slither through. Domi's lips pulled tight as she realized their quarry had a good piece of security here.

She glanced back, scanning the mountainside with the telescopic optics for her friends.

Edwards and Sinclair appeared in stark contrast to the countryside as she picked up their passive IFF signature. She was out in the open and visible to them, but like her, their suits were configured to blend in with their surroundings.

Domi lifted her hand and waved for the rest of the team to come down. Sure, the idea of digging under the heavy iron gate was a bit foolish, but it was also so audacious that no one would consider someone try it. If there were any contraindications on the opposite side of the gate for making their entrance through there, then they could retreat.

Domi hoped it wouldn't come to that. She wanted to get inside before their friends ended up in deep trouble.

Something bothered Domi as she waited for the others.

There were only two Spartans lifting and maneuvering the Manta; the same suits she recognized from Edwards's vid footage. She wondered at the lack of the third of the suits. She recalled the heavy tread of a solo entity
approaching their landing at the parallax point with Kane and Grant, but the two men had reported that it wasn't a Gear Skeleton that approached them. It had been some form of inhuman giant akin to the massive Balor they had battled in the Appalachian Mountains months ago.

That kind of a creature was an abomination crafted of human flesh, of a living, willing host, and often the dead and dying victims of the mutant. The Fomori, as they had called themselves, were on average about three to four hundred pounds, their bodies bulked up almost like cannibals, robbing the very parts of other people, stealing muscle, bone and skin to make them larger and stronger. This form of hideous transformation was part and parcel of a deadly being known as Bres, who was an inheritor of Enlil's, a half-breed who had molded himself into an object of perfection.

Stolen flesh, Domi continued to muse, looking down the tunnel. She began to wonder what a Gear Skeleton would resemble if it were given a coating of living humans, and the thoughts were uncomfortable. It only made sense…skeletons need muscle and meat.

And a hammer-wielding god such as Charun would need an opponent.

One whose bones could never break, being forged from an alloy version of orichalcum, and whose flesh could be healed and rebuilt, using the mindless and enslaved thralls Domi and her group had been avoiding for the past day and a half.

She wondered if the others would pick up on that. She had to remain in radio silence and avoid broadcasting the presence of CAT Beta to Vanth. She had to trust in the intelligence of her three friends that this threat could quite easily have been a replay of Helena Garthwaite's manufactured threat, that Vanth built something for Charun
to slug it out with, finally having scored enough to make a true giant.

Of course, this could mean that some of Smaragda's own people could not be recovered, not if they were dissected and rebuilt to make new monsters.

Domi ground her teeth. She'd have to inform Smaragda of the fates she suspected, but hoped she wouldn't have to.

Domi prayed silently that she'd never have to tell the brave Olympian soldier that the comrades she had lost had been torn apart and reassembled as the muscle and skin of a robotic giant.

* * *

T
HE DULL RUMBLE
of thunder in the sky alerted Grant that the Manta had returned. His instincts were buzzing, almost as if the tension he was feeling was emanating from him like electricity. Grant was glad to have Kane and Brigid both back at his side, but he couldn't help to think this was an elaborate trap, one that was intended to pull the three of them off balance.

Grant fought the urge to jump up and head to the ladder to see Kane bringing in the Manta from the peak of the hill. The hatch at the top was open, which was how he was able to hear the sonic boom of the Manta's deceleration as it reentered the atmosphere. Charun smiled at the sound.

“Your friends have returned,” the eight-foot humanoid confirmed. His face was bright and happy at the sound; his eye lit with genuine pleasure at the prospect of meeting Brigid Baptiste. Grant felt bad for being so suspicious of Charun, but he'd encountered enough sociopaths, human and otherwise, who could put on a good mask of false emotion. If he turned out to be a noble and just being, then Grant would beg forgiveness of the Stygian.

He hoped he would be able to beg such forgiveness. The fact that the giant let him keep his side arms, even the bag of various weapons, was disarming enough an
action, but it also could have been a sign of superiority. After all, Charun had faced the heaviest of small arms on the Manta and was unharmed. What mere man-portable equipment could injure such a being?

The truth was that Grant realized Charun's invulnerability had, in part, been due to the ancient hammer, an artifact of alien technology that was so powerful, it might as well have been magical. Sure, the others had
seen
the damage the hammer had wrought upon his Manta, but Grant was the only one to have been on the receiving end of the weapon in the hands of Charun. The aircraft had shaken violently. Even the inertial nature of the pilot's couch had conveyed the force of the hammer strike.

Charun was not an opponent to underestimate, and for all his cheer and amicability, showed signs of great intellect behind his attempts to seem simple and straightforward.

“I didn't want to seem too rude by hopping to my feet when I heard it,” Grant told Charun as he rose from his seat.

“It is understandable, Grant,” Charun said. “I have spent many a quiet hour in the company as an uncertain guest.”

“In between your tasks as a chooser of the slain?” Grant questioned.

“My duties as a so-called psychopomp, as you mentioned before,” Charun said. “The stories, as we've explained, have permutated over the many centuries.”

“So, maybe it is a good thing that we have Brigid coming in to join us, so we can better understand what's going on,” Grant returned.

“Vanth would explain much better,” Charun admitted. “I was more engaged in protecting our borders from the minions of the overlords.”

“Which makes you damn fine in my book,” Grant
noted. “Enlil and his bunch never have been friends of mine.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Charun responded. “Even in my time, it was an ancient saying.”

Charun motioned to allow Grant to take the lead up the ladder. Without hesitation, Grant was up the rungs and out of the hatch on the peak. The wake of the Manta bisected a cloud, smearing the white fluff of it behind, creating a streak on the afternoon sky. He enjoyed watching one of these machines in action, even from thousands of feet away, its sheer velocity and nature. When not engaged in stealth mode, it was a vulgar, glorious display of the true scale of human creativity.

It was one thing to punch through dimensional walls, to squirt your atoms through a wormhole halfway around a continent, but really, Grant was a pilot. He'd been flying the Deathbird iteration of the AH-1 Apache gunship for decades, and nothing felt like the sensation of skimming over treetops at 150 miles an hour. With the discovery of the Mantas from the moon base, all dreams of velocity and agility were increased exponentially. There was no sense of movement in a mat-trans, no thrill with it.

Even the Deathbird was still a magnificent flying machine that moved and felt like an extension of his body, an
amplification
of himself.

Watching from the sidelines, he was still impressed with the sleek, transorbital plane.

Charun was up through the hatch and standing beside him. A glance at the giant told Grant that he was interested in the Mantas, too.

Charun followed it intently. He'd encountered the—to him—alien craft, and though he wore a harness that let him take to the skies with inhuman ease and wielded a hammer capable of splitting a Manta in two with a direct
hit, the scram jet was wondrous to Charun. There was a sense of respect for the humans' tinkering.

The approach was clean from Grant's more clinical thinking, observing Kane's handling of the Manta. There was a difference between him and his younger partner. Whereas the Mantas were a joy, a drug to Grant, to Kane they were merely another means of transportation. There was no flourish, no excitement in his tearing between orbit and atmosphere.

Grant had to give Kane props for being precise and always in control, but that was no way to truly
fly
. Charun, with his wing harness, was someone who was more along the lines of what he experienced as a pilot.

Of course, all of this could have been projection, but Grant could see Charun nodding at the same points that he'd approved of in Kane's handling of the Manta. The scram jet switched to Vertical Takeoff and Landing mode, its engines swiveling so that it could hover and land on the clearing on the hillside.

Charun's head whipped around and Grant could feel the giant's tension increase.

“What's wrong?” Grant asked. He let his Sin Eater slide into his hand. Charun was suddenly on the defensive and he could see the demigod's hands flexing open and closed, sorely missing the hammer he should have had.

“We've got intruders,” Charun stated. “They're coming in.”

Grant was frozen in doubt for a moment but he kept his thoughts of CAT Beta deep within the back of his mind, buried under other mental processes. There was a threat, bringing Charun out of his curiosity, making the giant wish for a weapon. That wouldn't be Domi and the rest. The albino girl was a ghost when she wanted to be, just as stealthy as Kane himself.

No…someone was approaching, out in the open, and they were on a warpath.

“Should we have Kane take off?” Grant asked.

“No,” Charun stated. “This should be nothing for me.”

“But you're all itchy, ready to fight,” Grant added.

Charun glanced at the machine pistol in Grant's fist. “As are you…”

“Your instincts kicked mine off,” Grant replied.

“They come from that way,” Charun stated, pointing down the hill. “I cannot quite tell the number of them…it is as if there is more than one mind or spirit per intruder.”

Grant tilted his head.

Kane and Brigid were running forward, both of them with their weapons out, but leveled at the ground so as not to accidentally shoot someone as they rushed forward.

“What's going on?” Kane asked.

“Charun sensed intruders,” Grant explained. “Coming from that direction.”

Kane turned his head toward the forest that was pointed out. Brigid glanced down, too, but then returned her attention to the Etruscan giant. Her emerald eyes were wide as she looked at the titan from head to toe. Then she glanced at the hatch in the peak, blank-faced servants arriving carrying capsules the size of small melons in their hands.

Charun turned to the first servant, plucking the “ball” from his hand. He swung it up over one shoulder and Grant watched as straps suddenly stretched out from the capsule, winding around his chest. Then came the wings; crushed buds the size of Grant's forearms began unfurling into leathery wings, like those of a gigantic bat or reptilian pteranodons.

“The magic disappears when you look upon it up close, no?” Charun asked. He picked up another of the capsules and pressed it to his face, this one becoming the tusked, terrifying mask that, at this range, Grant could tell was
the “war paint” Vanth had referred to. It was not much different from the shadow suit Grant himself wore. This one, however, put itself onto Charun, spreading down and increasing the unhealthy blue-corpse pallor of the titan. In a way, this was also close to what he saw when Enlil began armoring his Nephilim warriors with those little buds of smart metal.