DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (35 page)

“He comes with his last minder, the last one I've left him after all these years.”

“You know him?”

He tilted his head, and smiled, and I remembered. Finally I remembered. Finally it clicked. “You—”

His finger was on my lips, before I could say it. “Shush, now. Hush now. He gets one more chance. Let us see what he will sacrifice.”

And with that he turned away, and snapped his fingers. One of the gangers standing in the back swallowed hard and moved forward. Barbatos drew a charred knife from his belt and cut him slowly, smearing bloody letters on the glass behind us. I turned my back, sickened, and instead found Rictus approaching me with a leer on his face. “I want you to listen to this,” he said. The sound of gunfire echoed through the phone, and he chuckled. “That's the sound of your boats getting shot to shit. That's the sound of the people on them dying.”

I closed my eyes.

“You know what gets me? You had a good shot. You knew there was a leak in the camp, you made us think you'd attack tonight. But you know what stopped you? A fucking phone call! We had phones, you didn't. Communications, you dumb bitch!”

“Correction,” I whispered. “You
had
communications.” I opened my eyes, to find him squinting at me. Good. My left hand came out from under my shirt with my Sig-Sauer cocked and ready.

BLAM!

It was a painful shot with my wounded hand, but at this range I couldn't miss. The phone blew into shards that peppered the both of us, and he shrieked and jumped back, holding a bloody hand. My arm whipped out as I aimed—

—And Barbatos' hand closed around it and pulled up. My shot went into the skylight above.

“Motherfuck... you... you dumb... what the hell... GAH!” Rictus swore, flapping his arms up and down like they were wings on a pissed off goose. I laughed, and that only made him angrier. His hand dipped down, pulled something metal out of a pocket, and with a 'snik' he was holding a switchblade.

“Hold the bitch still!” He hissed, and Barbatos growled. Rictus froze.

“Drop the gun or I break the arm,” he told me. I dropped the gun. It had done its job.

But there were more gunshots, from below. Sparky had run into the rest of the gang that was infesting the mall.

“Doesn't matter,” Rictus was almost sullen, as he clicked the switchblade back, and glared at me. “Your people are dead.”

“Mm. Got another phone?” I smirked. “You might want to confirm that.”

He stared. “Barbatos, can I borrow your phone?”

Barbatos released me, stooped and picked up the gun. He felt in a pocket, shook his head as he pulled out a charred mass of plastic. “The fire took it.”

“No other phones, hm? Pity.” My voice was full of mock sympathy.

Rictus heaved a sigh. “What did you do, you freaky tall bitch?”

“Your men just wasted quite a lot of time shooting up empty boats,” I said, letting my teeth show in my smile. “We put tarps on them, to cover them. Dire's people pushed them out to sea and fled while yours were dodging flaming cars.”

They hadn't fled far, just into the storm drain entrance that I'd originally emerged from, so long ago. But it was far enough, and no one else had known the plan but Guzman.

Barbatos' laughter shook his frame, and he clapped my shoulder so hard I staggered. “Ah! Ruthless, quick, clever. No, no, I think we're keeping you. WEB shall have to contain its disappointment. I want you, child. And we have vacancies to fill, so the timing is good.”

“You honestly think Dire will work for you? After all this?” I raised an eyebrow. “She didn't think you were stupid.” I pointed at Rictus. “That one, sure. You? Not so much.”

Rictus growled, but Barbatos gestured at him. “Fetch my bag.”

“We're going to regret this,” he muttered, but he did so regardless as he hauled a battered duffel out from where it had been hidden among the shadows.

“What are you doing?” I asked. The big man ignored me, opened the bag. He pulled forth an old style chalice, golden and stained. A vial of dust was held to the light shining in through the window, and damned if the contents didn't seem to writhe. It was almost like watching smoke. He cracked it, and let a fine powder sift into the chalice. Then he moved back to the ganger he had been cutting, and grabbed his arm, ignored the man's shrieks as he twisted it, forcing blood out of the wound into the cup. He swirled it, mixing blood and powder.

I took a step back, but felt cold metal against my neck. “Nope,” whispered Rictus. “You're drinking.”

“An explanation, then?” I asked.

More gunfire from below, more flaring light as Sparky hit another pocket of resistance. He was close, I gauged, but he may as well be miles away. He wouldn't get here in time.

“You've amused me enough. Certainly. But let us wait for all to arrive.”

I bit my lip.

And there for a second against the darkness, I saw a flash of white as a silent form ghosted past the railing to my north. It darted into an abandoned shoe store. I flicked my eyes around, but no one else seemed to have caught it. Finally, the Last Janissary was entering the field...

Another flash of light, very close this time. A few bullets came whistling up our way, cracking against the glass of the window. The line of Black Bloods up top returned fire, save for one wearing a balaclava. He slapped his face and hit the ground, red spurting out around him.

Then I was being marched backward as Rictus and Barbatos each took an arm and tugged. “Go,” Barbatos whispered to Rictus. The slim man pulled a pistol, and jogged around the railing. Towards the general direction of the shoe store. I flicked my eyes over, saw no sign of white.

Then Barbatos had his arm around my neck, and I fought him, to no avail. Lightning flared and blasted, scattering the group of Black Bloods firing down upon Sparky, and more gunshots came up.

And from outside, a distant thrumming. I'd heard that noise before. The WEB vehicle I'd brought down last night? One like it, probably.

I gnawed my lip. The timing would be rough...

“The Steampunks are outside cleanin' up the rest of your men,” Roy's voice drifted up the escalator.

Barbatos didn't reply.

The last ganger choked, crawled back towards us, before he slumped on the floor.

“You got one of ours. Give her back. Now.” Sparky. Good, he hadn't been hit.

“Come and get her,” was the big man's reply. “Or if you wait, she'll be mine.”

Discussion from below, and a slow tread on the escalator.

Roy came up first, sweeping his pistol around, eyes darting. Barbatos and I were the only ones visible. The large man had his arm wrapped around me, using me for cover. Amazingly, Sparky followed next. He hauled himself up the railings of the escalator through sheer strength of arms, dragging his lower body under him. Electricity flared and popped into the metal, lighting it up with a white corona. His hair flared, and his face was set in stubborn resolve... resolve that disappeared as he gaped at Barbatos and the red bloody letters on the window behind him:

La Commedia e finita

“You...” Sparky's voice trembled, as his old foe smiled at him one last time.

“Hello, old friend,” said he who had taken the name of Barbatos. “We have so much to discuss.”

“Great Clown Pagliacci...” Sparky whimpered.

CHAPTER 20: Plans Upon Plans

“Contingencies. That's the best advice I can leave you. Try to get into your enemy's head, and map out their tactics, figure out their strategy. Assume that they're going to be as smart as you, and prepare accordingly. I'm good at that, and that means you're good at it. Our power makes it easy... being a genius is handy, that way. Do this right, Dire, and you're going to shake the pillars of heaven...”

--Excerpt #116 from the Dire Monologues

Roy leveled his gun, and Pagliacci shook his head. “No. Shoot and she dies.” His arm tightened around me, and I couldn't help but let loose a coughing gasp. Roy put his gun up.

“Big man, hiding behind the lady—”

But Sparky's voice drowned out his taunt as it rose, and I could almost feel the sanity leaving him by the second. “How! How are you here? How are you even still alive! You were old!”

“I was,” Great Clown Pagliacci admitted. “And I should have died, back then. You did what no one else ever had. You sacrificed your friends, to end the comedy.”

Sparky shrunk back, and Roy shot him a puzzled look. The old hero trembled. “No. No, I didn't...”

“You left Lucy in the bear trap, saying you would come back for her when I was dead. You did not return in time. The armored one, Boilerplate. He fell through the boardwalk and my nets dragged him down, you had the choice of running after me or saving him. You let him drown.”

“No. I— We thought he'd cut the net—”

“The net, perhaps. The cables hidden in it? No.” Pagliacci's voice continued without mercy, beating down upon him like thunder. Sparky flinched at every word.

“And finally it was you and Mister Sandman. And I killed him. I had put grounding wires in my shoes, linked them to the floor. If you had helped him, if you had tried to grapple or punch me, Sandman's touch might have been able to strike me down. Send me to sleep, never to wake up. But no, you didn't do that, did you? You sat back and you threw lightning. Like you do, like you always did.” A rumble from behind me, and a shaking against my back. He was chuckling. “You didn't pull the gun until he was dead, and I'd carved his eyes out. Then you shot me, and left me to drown in a watery grave. And all your friends were dead, Leo.”

Sparky sagged to the ground, staring. Roy jerked his head to him, back to Pagliacci, torn. He couldn't move to comfort him, without exposing his back or side to the murderous villain.

“I should have died then, to be honest,” Pagliacci continued. “A fitting ending for a sick joke, for the horrible comedy that is this world. But I didn't. A thing found me. Gray and weak and thirsty. It whispered promises to me, gave me drops of its blood. Drops that gave me power. Drops that healed my wounds, strengthened my frame. Made me feel young again...”

“The Locust,” I said.

“Ah, you know it?”

“She knows you're nursing it back to health. We thought you were trying to wake it, but if it's already awake—”

“HA!” His laughter boomed through the gallery. No sanity, no joy in that laugh. Just sheer wickedness. “Oh. Oh, that is rich. No, of course not. In fact, once I was healthy, I crippled it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Its blood makes you strong in small doses if you're tough enough to handle it, and smart enough to mix it properly. More, you come to crave it. It would have made of me a slave. I found that unacceptable. I put my knife into its brain as it slept, and left it there. It sleeps now far below the city, twitching like a dead fish in the chains where I bound it. I visit it for its blood, bringing it the blood of dead men to sup upon. And in return we tap its veins for what we need.”

He swirled the chalice, held it down to my eye level. The oily black liquid roiled like hot tar, and the smell was horrible.

I pushed at his arms, clawed at them. I might as well have been trying to tear steel.

“That's what you did to Scrapper, wasn't it?” Roy said. “Son of a bitch.”

“Yes. Not draugr. Not vampire. Something in between. His will was strong; I thought he could ride it out. He failed, would have been draugr in time. But this one, now...  perhaps it is time for a queen of the blood!”

With that he shoved the chalice up to my lips. I shut my mouth, and he twisted his hand around, pinched my nose. I fought and dug my hand into a pocket, as Roy leveled the gun again.

A shot rang out from the shoe store and Roy fell, just as Rictus screamed and white cloth flashed in the darkness. The Last Janissary had made his move, but too late. Then I was drinking, and it tasted worse than it looked. And I had no choice, now. I had to risk death.

My hand closed upon the vials, withdrew them as my throat burned, as the stuff burned down my esophagus, and I fought to retch. But he clamped his hand over my face, and I bit at it and clawed at it with my free hand, as my right hand hurled the two vials of Essence of Entropy to the ground. I closed my eyes and held my breath as I felt the vapor billow up, and Pagliacci's roar held a note of pain in it that I hadn't heard before. I staggered forward, out of the cloud, I ignored the burning that tried to creep into my nose and eyes, and collapsed several paces away as my guts roiled and twisted.

And then, lightning. Like the fist of the gods, like the wrath of the heavens, like Tesla's wet dreams come to life, lightning flared and I turned my head in time to see it rip into Pagliacci. It flared as it burned and battered him as he stood shrieking and shriveling in a cloud of green smoke.

I held up my hand, saw that there were grey patches to go with the burns now. What the rest of me must look like, I couldn't say... and then I was retching, vomiting, and the black, vile taste in my mouth was replaced with a coppery taste and I was laughing between retches, as the black stuff drained from me.

Padded shoes whispered on the floor as the Janissary ran forward with blood dripping from his blade. Rictus' head bounced on its ponytail as he grasped it in his free hand, and I grinned around the puke to see it. A grin that fell, as I turned to see Sparky crawling toward Roy. “No,” I whispered. There was blood. There was so much blood.

“YOU!”

Great Clown Pagliacci's shout took us all by surprise, and his hurled cleaver took the Last Janissary in the chest, hurling him over the railing and to the ground far below. I crawled to face him, weakened from my vomiting spree. He lurched out of the cloud, somehow still standing. With bones showing and lightning arcing between his wounds, he was still struggling toward us, one trembling hand fishing another cleaver from his belt. “Was that... all.. you had... Sparky?”

Sparky pushed himself up, slipped, fell into the blood. He looked at it, he looked at Pagliacci, and he raised his hands, but too late. Too late as the cleaver came up, too late as the dying Clown drew his arm back to throw...

BLAM!

And a red star blossomed in his forehead. He stopped, rocked back on his heels, and looked confused. It was almost comical, in a grotesque way.

BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Red craters appeared on his chest, and he toppled to his knees. And I whipped my head around to the source of the shots.

I saw the balaclava-clad Black Blood who had fallen to the first volley. And from this angle, I could see the ketchup packet stuck to his balaclava, with the “blood” still dribbling out of it.

He emptied the magazine into Great Clown Pagliacci, kept firing even after he stopped moving. Then, and only then did he sag back against the railing. Then, and only then did he roll his balaclava up.

“Martin,” I whispered, my guts still roiling. “Took you long enough.”

“Man, shut the fuck up. You know how hard it was to disguise up and sneak in with these assholes? Work my way in close like we discussed? Shit. You owe me for this.”

“Gladly. Please. Roy...”

“Oh! Oh fuck. Yeah, hangon, let me get some pressure on this. Uh... don't take this wrong, but are you gonna flip out or go full-on vamp or shit?”

“No.” I coughed up more black goo... And strands of silver with it, this time. “Got... An antidote from Khalid... beforehand. Can't turn with... this stuff in my stomach.”

“Shit. Smart.” He shook his head. “Damn. Here we thought it was a vampire, and it was some crazy dick all along. Khalid's gonna be pissed when he heals. Just goes to show ancient evil vampires ain't got shit on man as far as evil goes.”

That staccato noise I'd heard earlier was still approaching. Louder, now. “We need to get out of... here...” I whispered.

“No shit. Uh. You got any way to keep ugly down over there?”

“Just one.” I hauled myself up, rose to my feet. I was so, so weak. With trembling fingers I pulled the vial of greek fire from my pocket, its warmth agony against my burns. I lurched forward, and opened it, dropping it on Great Clown Pagliacci's back as it started to blaze. It lit him, and his body twisted as it burned.

“Now it's done, you freak,” I whispered. “Smolder and die.”

That's when the helicopter dropped down from above, and as I stared at its gray-painted form through the windows of the gallery realization dawned within my weary mind. They'd waited for me to finish him before they approached. They'd let their own ally die.

Then the minigun opened up. Glass shattered around us and I fell backward as I heard the others scrambling for cover behind me. In a heartbeat gray-and-black armored figures were jumping out of the side of it, rushing in with odd-looking guns in their hands. One fired a bolt of yellow energy at me, and faster than I could dodge or even think of dodging in my wasted state, it struck. And I knew nothing more.